


Alone Time

by William_Easley



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Future, Humor, Loneliness, S-F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:48:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24776395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/William_Easley/pseuds/William_Easley
Summary: In November of a future year, with his own family away and all the Pineses off on a cruise, Soos finds himself on his own in the Shack, which has just closed for the winter. Instead of feeling sorry for himself, Soos looks for little handyman chores he can do and spends a little time with himself. Set in the same universe as my main AU, but a few years later on.
Relationships: Jesus "Soos" Alzamirano Ramirez/Melody
Kudos: 9





	Alone Time

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own the show GRAVITY FALLS or the characters of the show. These are the property of Alex Hirsch, the creator of the show, and the Walt Disney Company. I don't earn any money by writing these fanfictions, but just write for fun and practice and in the hope that others enjoy reading them.

**Alone Time**

**by William Easley**

* * *

(Late November, a future year)

Loneliness hit in the week after Thanksgiving. The Mystery Shack was closed for the winter. Soos and Melody's brood—Jesús Benjamin Ramirez, his little sister Harmony, and the twins Mayson and Maybelle—were back in school. Stanley Pines and his wife, the Shack's next-door neighbors, were down in California, preparing to go with Alex and Wanda and their twins (plus, of course, their son-in-law and daughter-in-law) on a seventeen-day-long family cruise to Hawaii. Dr. Stanford Pines and his wife were also away from Gravity Falls, investigating some paranormal thingummy in Romania.

Most of all, Soos's wife Melody was in Portland, where her widower father had just undergone a serious operation, though it looked as if he would pull through OK, after weeks, maybe even months, of physical therapy. Melody expected to be at her dad's side until at least a few days before Christmas. And when school took its winter break, all the Ramirezes might even spend Christmas there this year.

The Shack seemed so lonely. So empty. Soos sighed. "I wish you could be here, Abuelita," he said. She could not, having passed away the previous summer, down in Mexico, surrounded by daughters and grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, the sad crowd including Soos and Melody—he'd be forever grateful to Stan, who over the last years had eased out of the Mr. Mystery persona, for stepping back in when they got the news from the Mexican hospital that it wouldn't be long. Soos and Melody had been able to be there for Abuelita's last few days, had said their goodbyes and received her blessing. Stan had run the Shack and looked after the kids like a trouper.

Now Soos was alone and restless and looking for something to do, anything to occupy his time. He'd become more than just a handyman. He'd taken courses online, had done more study at a vocational school not too far from the Valley, and had even been tutored by Dr. Pines on some abstract points of electronics. He'd become such an expert, had Soos, that long before, he'd brought everything in the Shack right up to speed, everything good as new but—this was, Stan said, the genius part—still looking as ramshackle as ever.

Now, seeking something to divert him, Soos went to his workroom, out in the shed—though it wasn't really just a shed any longer. In fact, a person could sleep quite comfortably in there, as Harmony and Maybelle had discovered when Harmony was eleven and Maybelle nearly eight and they'd started to have sleepovers.

But one compartment of the shed, with a secure lock on the door, was Soos's domain. It had good clear lights, a long workbench, an equally long pigeon-holed case against the wall behind the workbench, a pegboard hung with tools on the wall opposite, and a comfortable chair that allowed Soos to sit and tinker with small things—the engine of Little Soos's toy helicopter, which Soos had not only repaired but boosted in power and range, for example. Oh, by the way—on entering school, Little Soos had been teased about his name and had decided to go by his middle name instead. Now to his friends he was Benny. Still Little Soos or Soosie at home, though.

Soos opened a deep drawer below the workbench, full of maybe-later jobs he might get around to one day. What to do, what to do? He rummaged through broken and worn-out stuff. A watch, too complex for his big fingers. A wind-up toy locomotive that Little Soos had found in the woods ages ago, so locked in rust and so fragile with corrosion that it just could not be repaired.

He found his Abuelita's first hearing aids, which Soos could fix and had, but she'd moved on to more sophisticated ones, and sentimentally, Soos had never got around to donating these to a charity. He dug through more stuff that didn't tickle his fixing fancy until, way down at the bottom—a tape measure. Yeah, he'd been meaning for years to tinker around with that when he had some time to himself. Looked like this was the time.

He pulled it out, studied its dented case, tugged at the tape—stuck firmly. Soos selected a range of screwdrivers and a small pry tool, and carefully began to disassemble the tape measure. The tape had been pulled out about an inch, but would not retract.

"Do ti do ti do, workin' on a tape measure," Soos sang softly to himself. "Huh. Not so good at singing. Hey, Genie! How about playing some music that Soos likes?"

"Your wish," said an androgynous AI voice, "is my command."

The workroom filled with the strains of "Lovin' You All Over Again." Soos chuckled. He knew those guys! That was Sev'ral Timez, now in their mid-thirties, singing a tune from their still-popular TV show.

Soos softly sang along to the lyrics:

* * *

_Hey, Babe, great to see you again!_

_We haven't been together since can't remember when—_

_But your eyes are still blue,_

_And my heart is still true,_

_To start lovin' you all over again!_

* * *

Dipper had told him that rhyming "again" with "again" was sloppy songwriting, but, hey, Soos liked it, and nobody else had to listen. He cheered up as the next song on the playlist turned out to be "Straight Blanchin'." He'd always had a soft spot for that one. He rapped along: "I live up in a mansion!" And he tinkered as he sang, carefully disassembling the tape measure and placing the components on a big sheet where he'd drawn lettered squares.

He had donned his reading glasses—he needed them now that he was creeping up on forty—to deal with the strange spring in the heart of the contraption. He even used a jeweler's loupe at one point to make out some markings on the flat end of the spring, once he had detached the spring and was sure he could reinstall it. He frowned. "Huh. This beats me. Hey, Genie, please stop the music and place a call to Dr. Stanford Pines for me."

"I delight to serve. Calling Dr. Stanford Pines, mobile."

Stanford answered almost immediately. "Hello, Soos. Is there a problem?"

"Kind of a problem, Dr. Pines," Soos said. "Not like serious, though."

"Call me Stanford or Ford, please," Stanford told Soos for the seven hundred and eighteenth time.

"Uh, OK, Ford. Uh, how's your hunt going?"

Stanford sighed. "As I suspected, it's all a hoax. The infuriating thing is that the locals are all in on it and probably will continue with it. It's created a boom in tourism! Not that there's anything wrong with that," Ford added, perhaps remembering how Soos made his living. "Anyway, we'll be home in three days. How are things on your end?"

"Uh—first, I'm not calling too late, am I?"

"No, no, it's not even nine P.M. here yet. What's up?"

"Well, I got a device here I'm messing around with, and one of the parts might be like busted or some junk. It's got an inscription on it, microscopic, but it's symbols I can't read. It might be, I don't know, a serial number or something? Take a look for me?"

"My pleasure."

Soos reached for the handy imaging device and carefully zoomed the focus in on the part of the spring with the inscription. "Coming through now."

"I see it. My word, yes, I know what this is—it's an alien tongue, but it basically reads, 'Standard Resonating Coil Spring.' The creatures who built the alien ship from which it came used coils like that in a lot of their common devices."

"This one looks like it's broken," Soos said. "Could I, like, replace it with a normal coil spring?"

"An Earthly one?" Ford asked. "No, I'm afraid it wouldn't work. This material has an unusual ability to vibrate in different time and dimensional directions. Show me the whole spring."

Soos zoomed out. "See it?"

"Yes, yes . . . yes, I see where the spring has kinked. I'm sure it'll break if you try to straighten it. What are the measurements for the spring compartment?"

"Let me get my calipers. OK, uh, inches or like centimeters?"

"The latter, if you please, Soos."

"Yeah, OK. Let me get this as exact as I can . . . um, it says 5.20424 centimeters."

"Ah. That's one of the most common sizes. All right, Soos, go down into my private laboratory—remember the passcode?"

"Oh, sure," Soos said.

"Very well. On the first level in the storage compartment against the wall to your right as you come down the stair, look in, let me think. Look in Drawer 321 of the storage cabinet. That has an assortment of the springs in it, and unless I'm much mistaken, in about the third division of the drawer you'll find envelopes with the 5.2-range coils in them. Take one that looks whole and undamaged."

"Gee, thanks, Dr. Pines, I mean Ford!"

"You're welcome, Soos. I tinker very little with such things myself lately. Good fortune in solving your problem!"

"Thanks again! 'Bye!"

Soos went into the silent Shack, tapped the code into the now-outmoded snack machine—the modern ones took payment from phones and materialized the candy bars from components kept in bins—chocolate powder, peanut protein, that kind of component—and these old coin-operated machines were hard to find and hard to stock, but it was the Mystery Shack's snack machine, and Soos kept it going. It more than paid for itself. Kids loved the novelty of feeding it money and getting a candy bar in return. The whole machine swung away from the wall, creaking a little. Soos went back and found his oil can and took care of the hinges, replaced the oil can, and went downstairs.

"To the right, to the right," he told himself.

Practically the whole wall was a floor-to-ceiling storage cabinet, with about 500 drawers of differing sizes, and a stepladder beside the cabinet for getting at the drawers higher up. But 321 was chest-level to Soos. He pulled it out.

Square brown envelopes had been crammed into it. Dividers cut them into batches of about 30 or more each. The first divider had a tab: 1-1.75 cm. Next tab was 2-5 cm. The third tab was for a set of envelopes that filled all the rest of the drawer: 5-5.6 cm.

Each envelope had a measurement penciled in the upper left corner. "Should have wrote it down," Soos scolded himself. "Five point two . . . what was it, what was it?"

After a moment of thought, he told himself, "It was 5.20424 centimeters, dog!"

Yeah, that was it. He thumbed through several envelopes and stopped at the first of a great many that had been marked 5.2042. He peered inside. Yes, the coiled spring looked just like the kinked one. "Man, I hope this will work," he muttered. Then he told himself, "It's close, it's close, it'll do OK."

He carried it back to his workshop. Laid it on a piece of paper next to the broken one. Inspected them both. "Hey, Genie, see if these two springs are identical, OK, computer dawg?"

"Performing your commands is my only happiness. Scanning. They are identical to a tolerance of 99.9879 per cent."

"Let's try it."

Reassembling the tape measure was a fiddly, time-consuming business. A few minutes past noon, Melody called to chat—her dad, Ben, was out of intensive care and alert and talking and hungry, a good sign. She asked if he was lonely.

"Missing you, Melly," he admitted. "Missing you, like, so bad. But I'm OK. Got myself for company, and I'm working on a little project."

"Now, remember, I left some frozen lunches for you. All you have to do is heat them."

"You're, like, so good to me. Give your dad my best wishes, OK?"

"I will. He may get to go home in a week. If he does, you and the kids can come and visit him the next Saturday."

"Call me and tell me when, and I'll drive over there like a shot! Like a shot, Babe!"

They said their I-love-yous and I-love-you-toos. Then it was time to break for lunch. Soos took out and instantly heated a double portion of pot roast, potatoes, and mixed vegetables, ate in the kitchen, did the dishes, and then returned to the workshop.

All right, spring re-mounted, gears meshed, every moving part lubricated with a touch of graphite. Get the case back together.

"Let's test this thing out," he said. He cautiously pulled the tape out to "-2 h." He glanced at the clock: it was 1:11 PM.

He pressed the button, and zzip!

The world sort of shivered, and Soos blinked. He didn't feel any different, just a tiny bit more alone. But when he glanced at the clock, it read 11:12 AM.

"Whoa," Soos said. He thought back to eleven that morning. Where had he been?

Oh, right, looking in Dr. Pines's lab for a spring.

He pocketed the tape measure, slipped off the bench, and went back to the Shack. The snack machine was still pulled out from the hidden stair. Soos went down and saw himself bent over a pulled-out shelf. He heard the other Soos mutter, ""Should have wrote it down. Five point two . . . what was it, what was it?"

So, since he was standing right there, Soos spoke up and told himself, "It was 5.20424 centimeters, dog!"

We won't go into stable time loops or discuss the deal a time-traveler worked out to resolve the loop and solve the problem of having two Sooses in a dimension that devoutly wished to have only one Soos, but it was a good deal, and the only downside was that Soos sort of hated to see the other Soos go. However, both Sooses agreed, because one had a loving family here, they both had mad skills and a yen to travel, and after all, everyone in time needs a good handyman.

* * *

The End


End file.
